Assad may be offered clemency by Britain and US if he joins peace talks

 At this time of night, I thought it read Assange. But then... if anyone needs the punchline, I'm here all week.

Syria’s armed opposition

 'There's a fellow half in shot on the right, wielding an AK variant and wearing loosely assembled fatigues, but also with a scarf round his neck in Syrian colours which looks very much like his mum knitted it for him. One hopes that both are OK.'

 From Blood and Treasure's commentary [http://bloodandtreasure.typepad.com/…/not-exactly-hearts-an…] on an assessment of the armed Syrian opposition.

The Young Turks

 Leon Trotsky

 "In its real significance, a revolution is a fight for control of the State. That rests directly on the Army. This is why all revolutions in history sharply raised the question: on whose side is the army?..The restoration of the Sultan and his despotism would mean the end of Turkey, leaving the Turkish State to the mercy of those who want to carve it up. The victory of Turkish democracy, on the contrary, would mean peace."

Frederick Engels’ Speech at the Grave of Karl Marx

 "A disproportionate number of Alawis owe their livelihood to the regime. To fight for a post-regime future means to fight for a future in which their community will be, at best, less favoured than at present."

[http://qunfuz.com/2012/…/10/the-milgram-experiment-in-syria/]

 Most of the debate about Syria is about what people should do, very little is about why they do what they do. At least the above is a start. A hundred and thirty years ago at his friend's funeral, Frederick Engels said he thought his friend had discerned the primary cause:

 "Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.; that therefore the production of the immediate material means, and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given people or during a given epoch, form the foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions, art, and even the ideas on religion, of the people concerned have been evolved, and in the light of which they must, therefore, be explained, instead of vice versa, as had hitherto been the case."

 Do the Syrian bourgeoisie and state officials support the regime because they are wrong-headed, or because they benefit from it? Will the lower-level state functionaries be won away from it by being told they'll get a smaller slice of the same cake, or that the cake will be bigger once the parasites stop creaming off the top? If the latter are there irreconcilable interests of those who wish to profit from Syria in the future and those who would have to labour to produce those profits?

 How to overthrow the regime is another question. The working class has the power (in Russia in 1917 it was 2% of the population, I'm sure in Syria it is much higher), but for understandable reasons socialist politics there have been corrupted by Stalinist backers of the status quo. But still the question arises of who else will control any force capable of knocking the regime over; if that is foreign intervention they will impose their own idea of what is good for Syrians, replicating as far as they can the system of exploitation in their own country, whether that is Turkey, Saudi Arabia or the US. And if it is the FSA uncontrolled by the grassroots, then the best that can be hoped for is some sort of military Bonapartism.

 Similar questions arise as to how a post-Assad Syria is to be constructed. Is it simply to be a similar scheme of exploitation, with the Assad family removed and perhaps the facade of a Western-approved democracy, in which those with power and influence compete in elections to show the limited amount they are prepared to share with their own constituencies, while sharing the rest with their corporate friends at home and abroad, à la Iraq?

 These are the sort of questions that should have been asked by John Rees in this dreadful article,http://www.counterfire.org/…/15821-syria-the-left-and-a-rev…. But this supposed dialectician instead sets up a false pro/anti -intervention dialectic, in which the Syrians who don't support intervention supposedly see those who do as a bigger enemy than the regime. To which any anti-regime Syrian will reasonably tell him that he knows nothing and understands less, if they were to be more polite than he deserves.

The German Ideology

 "Syrian rebels tried to get me killed," says Channel 4 correspondent*

 Very stupid if true. On CNN last night they were talking of people fleeing the fighting between the army and rebels (as if they were equal threats), it only takes one incident like this to endorse a picture of a struggle between two equally [il]legitimate forces, just as it would only take one actual sectarian massacre by opposition supporters (say in response to the one in Qubair) for the government and the Russians to say that's all there is to the anti-Assad forces. They do that already, but they'll start to sound believable.

 Here's Marx on how the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas.
*[http://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/jun/08/alex-thompson-syrian-rebels]

Patrice Lumumba

“Dead, living, free, or in prison on the orders of the colonialists, it is not I who counts. It is the Congo, it is our people for whom independence has been transformed into a cage where we are regarded from the outside… History will one day have its say, but it will not be the history that Brussels, Paris, Washington, or the United Nations will teach, but that which they will teach in the countries emancipated from colonialism and its puppets... a history of glory and dignity.”
— Patrice Lumumba, October 1960

For those who might think the UN might help the people of Syria, a reminder of some of the facts of its first intervention. And brilliant though Lumumba was, it was he who made the mistake of thinking the UN would come to help. When Kofi Annan says that the Syrian opposition should stop fighting, it is so the intrigues of the Great Powers can rule the day.

‘The notion that democracy and capitalism are interlinked is nonsense’

  Just heard Tariq Ali tell Russia Today that it is just the US that doesn't want an orderly transition in Syria, which I think is to noticeably misread the situation there (where the regime isn't going to give up without a fight), but he understands an enormous amount and knows more.

 [Also RT had a report on the 150-fold increase in fines for unauthorised protests in Russia, which are still nowhere near the level said to exist in France and the UK],http://rt.com/politics/lower-house-illegal-protests-026/]

 [https://web.archive.org/web/20160805174731/http://tariqali.org/archives/2359]

Scuffle between Syrian air hostesses delays Saudi flight to Dubai

 'A scuffle between Syrian air hostesses supporting their country's government and those against it resulted in the delay of a Saudi Arabian Airlines flight to Dubai, a Saudi newspaper reported Monday.'

 Flight attendants at the front line of revolutionary struggle.

Lord Of The Rings: One Facebook Thread To Rule Them All

 RT had a report on Salafist supporters of Syrian revolution in Lebanon from which the opposite conclusions can be drawn from those that RT do.

 Living less in a fantasy world, here's Lord of the Rings on Facebook.

Moscow Mules

 Wyatt Cenac reports that Russia's opposition to intervention in Syria is really just an attempt to regain its status as the Evil Empire.

Open letter to the Stop the War Coalition (STWC), or real solidarity is needed!

 "Just like the overthrow of Saddam’s ugly Baathist regime in Iraq, it is the right of the Syrian people to topple the Syrian Baath regime too. This is the desire of the majority of Syrians and they have declared it with their blood, and it was not the desire of the Gulf states or an American agenda. On the contrary, these countries supported Assad at the beginning of the revolution in order to persuade him to absorb the demonstrations."

Assad circle 'could be charged with crimes against humanity'

 'Fresh evidence has emerged that members of President Bashar al-Assad's family and inner circle are directly ordering the commission of crimes against humanity in Syria.

Experts in international law consider it "preposterous and completely implausible" that Assad himself would be unaware of the systematic and widespread killing and torture.'

 No shit.

The Art of Insurrection

Leon Trotsky

 About Syria.

 "But if it is true that an insurrection cannot be evoked at will, and that nevertheless in order to win it must be organised in advance, then the revolutionary leaders are presented with a task of correct diagnosis. They must feel out the growing insurrection in good season and supplement it with a conspiracy."

Does al-Qaeda have a foothold in Syria?

 'If the West did not come to their aid, he worried the jihadis would find an opening.

"I tell the UN and the UN Security Council, the Syrian people can't take it anymore," he said.
"Our children killed; our women raped; our houses destroyed. If no-one helps us, we will turn to the devil himself." '

 Good BBC report. About the only thing to disagree with in the latter half of Paul Wood's report was this line:

 "Many rebel fighters are deeply pious. But there is a moderate tradition of Islam here at odds with al-Qaeda's harsh ideology."

 It doesn't make sense to portray al-Qaida's political beliefs as occupying an exclusive part of the religious spectrum. After the intro on the 10 O'Clock news and the short interview with Alastair Crooke I thought this might be a Russia Today style hatchet job on the opposition, whereas it is an exposure of the government's lies.

Berri: Dissociation policy to continue despite mounting pressure

 'Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said in remarks published Tuesday that Lebanon will hold fast to its policy of dissociation regarding events in Syria no matter the pressure.'

 According to Wikipedia:

 'Dissociation is a term in psychology describing a wide array of experiences from mild detachment from one's immediate surroundings to more severe detachment from one's physical and emotional reality.'

Nasrallah, Assange and injustice in Syria

 "Once everyone is around a table, what happens? Not much. The security edifice of the Assads will remain intact, while the opposition will have to end all military operations, or risk being accused of torpedoing the Annan plan. The regime will go around in circles, perhaps eventually offering the opposition the ragged bone of limited representation in a new government. This will be hailed as a victory for peace, but no Syrian government of the past 42 years has ever held power. By the time Assad’s pliant interlocutors realize this, the game will be up and the Syrian president will have dodged a bullet."

 I think the writer has his own issues with Hezbollah, but in terms of Syria the argument seems faultless. [Though I think "held" should read "shared" or "relinquished"]

 [Note Jan 2025: I now realise Michael Young means that the official government never held real power under the Assads]

Asma al-Assad as a hope for peace because she wears Louis Vuitton? Pah

 "A fixation on the Syrian dictator's wife western appearance has seen an absurd

petition gain traction. She is complicit in tyranny."


 Put not your trust in princes. Or princesses.

Britain considers blocking Syria’s Olympic head, an Assad aide, from attending London Olympics

 Well, good. Could make a point about other sporting events, but can't be arsed.

Bankers

 Stephen Mangan hosting Have I Got News For You:

 "Asma al-Assad used to be an investment banker, one of the few bankers to move onto something even more evil."